Mike Ovadia: Wrong-way crash 5 minutes from home

Another five minutes, and Mike Ovadia would have been safe at home.

Driving back after a sushi dinner with good friends in Manhattan, Ovadia had just pulled onto the southbound Wantagh State Parkway and was thinking about relaxing after reaching his house in North Merrick.

Suddenly, two bright lights appeared, hurtling toward him.

Before impact, Ovadia felt confusion, then fear, then nothing. He braced himself and closed his eyes.

"I remember hoping at the last moment I would open my eyes again," Ovadia recalls.

Ovadia, now 42 and a Seaford resident, survived the Nov. 17, 2005, head-on collision with a wrong-way driver who later was convicted of driving drunk and first-degree assault.

The impact thrust Ovadia's right femur bone into his hip, breaking the leg and shattering the hip. His lungs were punctured, ribs broken, collarbone snapped. He spent a month in the hospital, about 12 days of it in a coma that doctors induced to manage the horrific pain.

But Ovadia, a general contractor, pulled through with a surgically repaired hip and what's now a barely perceptible limp. He counts himself lucky, especially when he hears of other victims of wrong-way drivers - including Andre Menzies, the New York City police officer killed Nov. 15 on the Northern State Parkway when an allegedly drunken driver, going the wrong way, smashed into Menzies' car.

"A wife missing her husband, a child missing his father, nothing is ever going to be the same for them," Ovadia said. "Compared to them, I am quite fortunate."

The driver who hit Ovadia's car - Albeiro Valencia, now 48, of Elmhurst, Queens - was first seen going north in the southbound lanes of the Wantagh about 10 p.m. that night near the Jones Beach toll plaza, Nassau prosecutors said. In a 1993 Eagle sedan, he drove the wrong way for four miles, nearly striking at least five other vehicles before smashing into Ovadia at 10:15 p.m. and then another SUV, injuring that driver, prosecutors said.

When emergency workers told Valencia of the other drivers' injuries, he responded: "I don't know and I don't care," prosecutors said. Valencia had non-life-threatening injuries from the crash, according to police.

Nassau prosecutors, noting that Valencia had a 0.21 blood-alcohol level, argued he showed depraved indifference to human life by driving drunk on a highway. In a bench trial, a judge agreed and also convicted him of second-degree assault and driving while intoxicated.

Valencia was recently released after a nearly 5-year prison term. Attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.

Ovadia said his life was spared by a random act: He wore his seat belt that night, something he rarely did before.

"I don't know why I did it," he said.

Still, Ovadia almost died in the hospital.

At the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, doctors placed him in a coma as they worked on his multiple problems. He remembers listening to the voices of his girlfriend and brother but being unable to respond.

"I could hear people, but my mind was elsewhere," he said.

Nearly three months after the crash, Ovadia returned to work at Oz General Contracting, the Bellmore company he started with his brother in 1984. He was 50 pounds lighter, had a metal hip and walked with crutches.

Always active and mobile before the crash, Ovadia is now limited to desk work, which he finds frustrating.

"I'm no longer active on the field. I can no longer climb up the ladders like I used to. I can't kneel down," he said. He points to his right foot and notes that he can't raise his toes off the ground.

He still feels pain in that leg and hip, and will need another hip replacement in five to 10 years.

Memories of the crash are never far away.

"It reminds me every time I drive by the site," said Ovadia, who lives and works a few minutes from the crash scene. "And this time of year, I can literally feel it. The cold weather affects the metal in my body."

But there's also much to be thankful for. Ovadia said he has returned to a healthy weight. He goes to the gym and he works long hours again at his company's showroom.

"I am an optimistic person," Ovadia said. "I think, 'If I'm feeling pain, at least I'm feeling something.' It could have been worse." With Ann Givens